It is an interesting weekend at the box office, as Hannah Montana The Movie opens to the delight of tween girls everywhere, Dragonball Evolution opens a decade too late and Seth Rogen stars in what seems like his 20^th movie in the past 2 years, Observe and Report. Hannah Montana will certainly have the biggest opening take out of the 3 new releases, but will it be enough to take the top spot away from Fast & Furious? Let’s take a look.

Last year, 3-D concert film, Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds, premiered to a record breaking $31.1M on just 683 screens. Can Hannah Montana The Movie soar as high? There are quite a few differences between the 2 movies. First, the 3-D concert was billed as a 1 week engagement (Disney extended its run after the success of the 1^st weekend); HM the Movie has no such cache. This shouldn’t make that much of a difference anyway, as the fans will be out in force for opening weekend, one way or another. The 3-D concert film also had the benefit of higher ticket prices, $15 a pop, versus the movie at regular ticket prices. Of course, HM the Movie is launching far wider in 3118 theatres as compared to the concerts 683. This should make a bit of a difference as I’m sure there were some fans that were shut out of the concert movie on its opening weekend. If you take Best of Both Worlds $31.1M opening and divide it by $15, you come up with roughly an audience of 2 million people who saw it on opening weekend. If you multiply 2 million by today’s average ticket prices ($7.20) that would put Hannah Montana The Movie on track to make just over $14M. Like I said earlier, due to the larger number of theatres showing the movie, a bigger audience will be accommodated. Let’s up the turn out to about 2.9 million; that would give Hannah Montana about $21M for the weekend, which still doesn't seem right.  Forget all of the math, I think Hannah Montana can collect about $32M this weekend, just beating the opening take of the 3-D concert film.

Seth Rogen stars in Observe and Report, the second movie about a Mall Cop this year. How the hell does that happen? Don’t ask me.   I can understand when studios are competing to put out a disaster movie about an asteroid set to hit earth (1998’s Deep Impact and Armageddon) or a natural disaster like volcanoes erupting (1997’s Volcano and Dante’s Peak), but competing mall cop movies; it borders on the absurd. This is the eighth movie Seth Rogen has been in since 2008, so the question becomes how much Seth Rogen is too much Seth Rogen? He’s like the new Ben Affleck! He is way over exposed right now. Anyway, to get to the point, Observe and Report doesn’t look that funny in the TV spots. The R rating has restricted the studio from showing some of the funnier bits in the commercials and will also restrict the overall audience for the movie. There also a bit of a controversy brewing about a “date rape” scene in the movie and this could certainly turn off some of the audience. I think Observe and Report can make about $12M this weekend.

Based on the popular Japanese cartoon series, Dragonball Evolution bursts on to the scene this weekend to little fanfare. This is a movie that would have done much better if it were released a decade ago when the property was really hot. I’m afraid that this one isn’t really on many young boys’ radars. My own son has no interest and he wants to see everything that comes out, trust me. With that in mind, Dragonball Evolution may bring out some diehard fans and gross about $6M this weekend.

Among holdovers, last week’s champ, Fast & Furious should lose quite a bit of traction as it drives down hill about 60% from last weekend’s record take of $70.9M. This would bring the racing car sequel about $28.4M for its second lap. Adventureland debuted to a mild $5.7M last weekend and should ease off about 40% to collect another $3.4M. To see the rest of my predictions, check out the chart below.